Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Lonestar's eCollege failed to upload the discussion module. I will have to try again tomorrow. In the meantime, here is the discussion assignment so that you can begin.

Use one of the following questions as a starting place for your discussion paragraph on John Chavez's "The Lost Land." Remember to follow these directions . Be sure to read "What is a paragraph" before you begin.

1. Explain the role of "Aztlan" in the construction of Mexican American identity in the Southwest.2. What are some of the causes and consequences of the artificial ethnic divisions between early Latin immigrants into the Southwest and later 20th-century. Do you think these divisions persist today? Why or why not?

As always, I encourage you to comment on each other's paragraphs.Remember to be respectful and have fun!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Somewhere between writing this quiz and uploading it onto Vista, two questions got dropped, so there are only 18 questions. The questions are worth 5 points each. 18 times 5 equals 90. Therefore, if you get every question right, you will only make 90 points. I will resolve this by adding 10 points to everyone's quiz score. The quiz is due no later than April 11. Good luck!

Monday, March 16, 2009

I have to let you in on something: I have been going ahead of the syllabus and cleaning up the chapter quizzes before you get to them. It is really tedious, and it takes a long time but some of the answers are wrong, and some of them just don't make sense. It had been my plan to use part of spring break to get the Unit 3 quizzes cleaned up. As you know, the system was down for spring break so you guys will be using the same quiz questions everyone else around here uses, meaning some of them are just not right.

So here's what I'm going to do. For Unit 3, I am going to scale everyone's quiz grades up 8 points. That should compensate for any goofy questions that you get. Furthermore, the exam questions are going to be harder because there will be some questions you haven't seen before. Therefore, I will be curving the exam scores as well. I'll let you know how much when I see the scores.

By the time we get to Unit 4, I'll have those questions straightened out. Unit 3 is going to be a bear. Sorry about that. If it's any consolation, most online courses don't get this kind of attention. They just run with whatever questions the textbook publisher sends.

The Chavez quiz and discussion board will be ready by the end of this week.Good luck!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

I finally got all the discussion posts graded. It took a while but everyone got some kind of feedback. In some cases, the feedback looked something like this:

evidence

proofreading

In this case, the author needs to pay more attention to how she uses evidence, and also needs to proofread more carefully. These elements are more fully explained here. Most of you are writing at the college level, and many of you are not. This is okay. This is the time when you develop and improve your reading and writing skills. I sometimes find the following video helpful with my own writing. It's a cool video, anyway. Check it out.

I enjoyed reading your posts, and I learned a lot from them. Keep up the good work!